Nobody's Fault But Mine
It's frustrating when you can't seem to get things done in a timely manner. It's even more frustrating when you realize you've got nothing to blame but your own lazy ass. Which puts me in my current predicament: I'm supposed to be working on a paper, but I've been sidetracked, and now I'm writing a blog entry that no one will read purportedly as a catharsis for my lack of creativity and motivation.
I've had these things hanging over my head for some time now, I know. And while I tend to operate pretty well under pressure, it seems that these papers just aren't going nearly as smoothly as one might expect, particularly given my previous track record. ("Fastest Thesis in the West," anyone? Thank you, Jeff Bagdis, for my favorite recent moniker.) I haven't quite determined if it's a self-consciousness issue, or a moment of self-doubt, or a silly case of not feeling like what I do is going to live up to standards I'm not even sure of yet. Whatever it is, it's totally fucking up my mojo and threatening to turn the next two weeks in a muddled morass of monotony and misery.
I knew from the start that the end of February was going to be problematic, and it has been, but again, it's all my own fault. If I'd been more diligent in the reading of this one particular text, I would have realized that the work would have solved a great many of the problems I've had in conceiving my issue and that it would make the writing of this paper much easier than I had anticipated. Of course, I've also had my doubts that the topic I planned to discuss would actually fill at least 20 pages, but it sure seems like that's a more reasonable expectation now -- it helps, too, that when you realize you can break a paper down into smaller segments, and that those segments can easily fit a 5-6 page requirement, you're good as gold.
I know too that part of it is the sense of transformation I'm attempting to instill in my English 015 students: not only does high school writing not really cut it as college writing, neither does undergraduate writing really cut it as graduate writing (or, as it should more appropriately be called, pre-professional writing, with the prefix pre- interpreted in the very loosest sense). And I can't help but feel that, at least in the case of the paper on The Dress Lodger, I'm doing nothing more than writing a glorified undergraduate paper. And sure, I remember not learning all the ins and outs of college writing in my first semester at Princeton -- Professor Kim received a great number of indirect diatribes, none of which I ever told to her face, of course -- but there's a whole lot of pressure to professionalize pretty quickly and it doesn't help when your first work reeks inexcusably of what you "used to do," not what you're "supposed to do."
Granted, Paul and Lisa are about as cool as one could expect from professor types, particularly those with whom you're fraternizing in your first semester. I know they both know I work hard, that I'm capable of good things, and that I'm just a lowly first year -- and that all of this will be taken into account when the dreaded grading happens. But I also feel like I owe them something better than they're expecting, something that will really wow them and convince them that I'm not just another first year. And I guess it's fair to say that my primary fear at this point is that that's all I'll end up being.
Which, I stupidly realize, predicts that I won't gain anything from this whole experience, which is a total fallacy. I know I'm supposed to learn and improve and that I'm not going to be the best right now and that nobody has the kinds of expectations for my work that I have and...well...
Yeah, it sounds pretty fucking stupid, doesn't it?
Which leaves me with little left to blog about and a substantial amount of other writing to do. And as counterproductive as it may end up being, I have to admit that, by this point, I've resigned myself to the fact that I've got a fairly 50/50 odds in terms of grades, and that it's just a matter of sitting down and getting it done, which is something I've been able to do with fair success before.
So enough dissecting my mindset. Time to go work on that paper about dissection, and hope that I fare better than the corpses of which I write.
I've had these things hanging over my head for some time now, I know. And while I tend to operate pretty well under pressure, it seems that these papers just aren't going nearly as smoothly as one might expect, particularly given my previous track record. ("Fastest Thesis in the West," anyone? Thank you, Jeff Bagdis, for my favorite recent moniker.) I haven't quite determined if it's a self-consciousness issue, or a moment of self-doubt, or a silly case of not feeling like what I do is going to live up to standards I'm not even sure of yet. Whatever it is, it's totally fucking up my mojo and threatening to turn the next two weeks in a muddled morass of monotony and misery.
I knew from the start that the end of February was going to be problematic, and it has been, but again, it's all my own fault. If I'd been more diligent in the reading of this one particular text, I would have realized that the work would have solved a great many of the problems I've had in conceiving my issue and that it would make the writing of this paper much easier than I had anticipated. Of course, I've also had my doubts that the topic I planned to discuss would actually fill at least 20 pages, but it sure seems like that's a more reasonable expectation now -- it helps, too, that when you realize you can break a paper down into smaller segments, and that those segments can easily fit a 5-6 page requirement, you're good as gold.
I know too that part of it is the sense of transformation I'm attempting to instill in my English 015 students: not only does high school writing not really cut it as college writing, neither does undergraduate writing really cut it as graduate writing (or, as it should more appropriately be called, pre-professional writing, with the prefix pre- interpreted in the very loosest sense). And I can't help but feel that, at least in the case of the paper on The Dress Lodger, I'm doing nothing more than writing a glorified undergraduate paper. And sure, I remember not learning all the ins and outs of college writing in my first semester at Princeton -- Professor Kim received a great number of indirect diatribes, none of which I ever told to her face, of course -- but there's a whole lot of pressure to professionalize pretty quickly and it doesn't help when your first work reeks inexcusably of what you "used to do," not what you're "supposed to do."
Granted, Paul and Lisa are about as cool as one could expect from professor types, particularly those with whom you're fraternizing in your first semester. I know they both know I work hard, that I'm capable of good things, and that I'm just a lowly first year -- and that all of this will be taken into account when the dreaded grading happens. But I also feel like I owe them something better than they're expecting, something that will really wow them and convince them that I'm not just another first year. And I guess it's fair to say that my primary fear at this point is that that's all I'll end up being.
Which, I stupidly realize, predicts that I won't gain anything from this whole experience, which is a total fallacy. I know I'm supposed to learn and improve and that I'm not going to be the best right now and that nobody has the kinds of expectations for my work that I have and...well...
Yeah, it sounds pretty fucking stupid, doesn't it?
Which leaves me with little left to blog about and a substantial amount of other writing to do. And as counterproductive as it may end up being, I have to admit that, by this point, I've resigned myself to the fact that I've got a fairly 50/50 odds in terms of grades, and that it's just a matter of sitting down and getting it done, which is something I've been able to do with fair success before.
So enough dissecting my mindset. Time to go work on that paper about dissection, and hope that I fare better than the corpses of which I write.
posted by Dave at 2/26/2008 12:20:00 PM
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